How to Monitor Ceph Clusters with Zabbix: 3 Practical Methods

Ceph is an open‑source distributed storage platform; this article introduces three methods to monitor a Ceph cluster with Zabbix, focusing on concepts and commands without detailed configuration.

1. Monitor Ceph with Agent2

Since Zabbix 5.0, Agent2 supports Ceph monitoring via Ceph's RESTful module (listening on port 8003). Enable the module, generate a self‑signed SSL certificate, create an API user, list keys, and test the API with curl. Then configure the Zabbix agent to collect data.

Enable RESTful module

<code>ceph mgr module enable restful</code>

Generate SSL certificate

<code>ceph restful create-self-signed-cert</code>

Create API user

<code>ceph restful create-key zabbix</code>

List all API keys:

<code>ceph restful list-keys</code>

Verify the API user (replace and with actual values):

<code>curl -k https://api:YOUR_TOKEN@<ceph-mgr>:<port>/server</code>

Modify the Zabbix Agent2 configuration to skip TLS verification and restart the service:

<code>vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agent2.conf
Plugins.Ceph.InsecureSkipVerify=true
systemctl restart zabbix-agent2</code>

Data collection works, but the

ceph pg dump

command is denied, a known issue discussed in Ceph forums.

2. Monitor Ceph with Zabbix Sender

From Ceph Luminous onward, the ceph‑mgr provides a Zabbix module.

Install zabbix‑sender

<code>rpm -Uvh https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.2/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-5.2-1.el7.noarch.rpm
yum install zabbix-sender -y</code>

Enable Zabbix module

<code>ceph mgr module enable zabbix</code>

Configure Zabbix server and host

<code>ceph zabbix config-set zabbix_host 192.168.2.24
ceph zabbix config-set identifier node1
ceph zabbix config-show</code>

Import template and link to host

The template is located at

/usr/share/ceph/mgr/zabbix/zabbix_template.xml

; import it in Zabbix and attach it to the host.

Test data sending

<code>ceph zabbix send</code>

Data appears in Zabbix every 60 seconds.

3. Custom scripts

Shell or Python scripts can invoke Ceph commands or the RESTful API for monitoring; many open‑source examples are available online.